Crosstalk between many signal-carrying wires can be reduced by using twisted wire pairs, with one wire of the pair carrying a signal and the other being grounded. When a group of twisted wire pairs is to be connected to the contacts of a connector, it is often specified that the mating ends of the contacts be arranged in two rows, one row connected to the signal wires and the other row connected to the grounded wires. It is common to use contacts with insulation displacement wire termination ends to connect to the wires. A common arrangement is to use straight contacts with the mating ends and wire termination ends of a first group of contacts lying on a first side of an insulative body, and with the mating and termination ends of a second group of contacts lying on the second side of the body. In that case, the twisted wire pairs must be separated immediately before the connector, with the signal wires all routed to one side of the body and the grounded wires all routed to the other side of the body.
The need to route the two wires of each twisted pair to different sides of the body hampers the termination of the wires to the contacts. In many cases, a ribbon cable could be used with alternate wires of the ribbon cable being grounded, but the need to separate the wires of the ribbon cable and route them to opposite sides of the insulative body prevents simple mass termination of a ribbon cable to the wire termination ends of a group of contacts. A connector which enabled mass termination of the wires of a ribbon cable to the termination ends of a group of contacts, while assuring that the mating ends of the contacts were arranged in two rows with the signal-carrying contacts in one row and the grounded contacts in the other row, would be of considerable value.